What are followers worth who don’t follow you because you’re tweets are so interesting, or the stuff you sell is so good, etc… Do these followers really ‘follow’ you, in the sense that they follow what you say? And do they keep following you?

Moreover how are those followers recruited? Are they asked to do so? Are they offered money?

Well I don’t think so. There must be easier money strategies.

But how can you make people follow without asking?

Well there may be a sneaky way to force people to do so, without them being aware of it.

At least I think that has happened to me.

Saturday I got this dm:

I was alarmed.

First, somebody sends me a dm with a link to a marketing gift. I never click such links, you never know where they lead to. Even if it comes from someone I trust, it may be that his/her account has been hacked, so I have learned…

Second, I’m not following this guy, at least not any longer….

Third I have blocked him before, after a similar dm.

The first time I got a dm of @jonathanvolk I thought I made the mistake by accidentally following him. But now (having blocked him before) I was sure that that wasn’t the case.

Out of curiosity (and to block him) I checked his Twitter account. Here I found several people complaining to him about the very same thing (the first tweet appeared later in response to my tweets).

@SorbetDigital appeared to have similar problems, not only with @jonathanvolk, but also with @JohnChow (see her post).

@JohnChow did ring a bell. Didn’t I block him in the past and didn’t I see his tweets rolling by lately?

I quickly checked Friend or Follow, a fantastic program, that shows you the people you follow and don’t follow you in return (following), your fans (who only follow you) and your friends (reciprocal relationship).

And who did I see there? John Chow, plus another guy that I presumably didn’t follow voluntarily: @MrGatherSuccess.
[The 2nd robot to the upper left also isn’t kosher, as I found out today.]

Their Twitter pages ((below in blue and pink) have texts according to expectations.
Their follower/following ratio is absolutely skewed (557:1 and 1090:1 respectively) so apparently their approach works in the sense that they got more followers, probably recruited in much the same way as they “recruited” me.

they have many followers, some having skewed follower/following ratios

they “know” each other and may refer to each other

Strikingly @jonathanvolk has a post in which he explains how to get 25,000 Twitter followers with “Twitter Followers for Sale”. Juicy detail: Shoemoney gave him the tip. Vice versa at shoemoney.com, Shoemoney advocates to download the affiliate marketing guide of Jonathan.

In the post I outline a few methods I have used to essentially pay for twitter followers and how much it has cost me per follower. With the methods like paying twittercounter.com, for example, you know exactly where your twitter followers are coming from.

Recently my follower count has been increasing steadily (and fairly rapidly) without me paying for any more services.

I’ve received a few @ messages before saying the person didn’t follow me and they were unsure how they did. I usually brushed it off as a… how can I put it lightly… computer illiterate person.(emphasis mine)

I think however that one of the services I used is using some sort of application access to automatically make users follow those who pay for the service.

The only problem is, I’m not sure which service is doing it… or if it’s just someone trying to get my account banned.

Since I have no way of know knowing… I have no way of stopping it.

Kinda crazy. Either way, be careful buying followers unless you know explicitly where the users are coming from!

——————

Kinda bullshit “Since I have no way of know knowing… I have no way of stopping it.” …. Booh!

Let me give you one tip, guys (assuming that you are honest about this): go sit around the table and see which follower-robbering service you share, and do something about it!!

How people can force you to follow is a technical issue, I know little about. Jonathan refers to a follow bug in Twitter that they have found but should have been fixed.

Indeed @librarianbe told me the same in response to my “tweets for help”. He referred to an article inGizmodoexplaining how to force anyone to follow you on Twitter. Apparently the bug was not fixed (yet?), or there is another leak still to be discovered.

Twitter handled the p @ r n-spam well. I hope it will find a solution to these problems too.

For such forced following and marketing dm’s are not only annoying, and an intrusion on our privacy, they are also bad for the credibility of a tool like Twitter.

So I’m going to block these guys (of course) and report them to Twitter using the ticket file @mrgunn advised me.

Meanwhile I advise you marketer guys to reassess the value of your followers. Do you only care about the size of the flock? Is it just the number of sheep? Do you want to impress by numbers? Or do you care about by whom you are being followed? And if what you’re tweeting does matter to them? Because only then you will have value as a twitterer and deserve to be followed. Otherwise, how can I put it lightly…you’re a bit sheepish.

Added 18-05-2010

According to Twitter Status the bug that permitted a user to “force” other users to follow them was resolved & cleaned up May 10th. However Jonathan send the dm May 15th (although he might have forced me to follow him longer ago).

If you are still seeing folks you are following who you didn’t choose to follow, Twitter advises to use the block or unfollow tools as a remedy.

However, these buttons do not work effectively as @jonathanvolk and @johnchow keep resurrecting again after a total block.

@jonathanvolk reappeared in the Following Tab of Friend or Follow this very night, about 3 days after blocking (see comment).

Information

10 responses

Hey man! Sorry about the issues! It truly is annoying to have this type of issue because while I am actively working on fixing it, there is nothing I can do… I have removed my accounts from EVERY marketing service ever used and the numbers continue to flock in.

Some people have told me they think it’s an attempt to get my account banned thanks in much part to people like you.

Oh and John Chow and Shoemoney don’t have skewed twitter followers… Shoemoney.com, Johnchow.com, JonathanVolk.com – all large followings of people who are looking to learn to make money online.

“Some people have told me they think it’s an attempt to get my account banned thanks in much part to people like you.”

Hey Mister, I didn’t ask for this. If you would have followed the proper etiquette, this wouldn’t have happened. My post is the consequence of your spam (an act of defense), not the reason that this happens…

Oh and John Chow and Shoemoney don’t have skewed twitter followers… Shoemoney.com, Johnchow.com, JonathanVolk.com – all large followings of people who are looking to learn to make money online.

Sure, the *real* followers may be the kind that want to make money online, but your graphs in your first post really show a tremendous increase in the number of new followers as a consequence of the service(s) you paid for.
Those followers probably are like me and all the others protesting at your blog and Twitter account. We have been cheated! We don’t want to follow you! ok?

Personally I don’t think somebody wants to ban your account. What happens is just the consequence of a bad service that did what you asked for: create a large flock of followers. Once these silly sheep notice it, they are “not amused” (to put it lightly) and want to finish this spamming practice.
It is really surprising that you didn’t wonder where those followers came from in the first place, nor if it was really such a good thing to do.

It would suit you if you could put yourself the shoes of the ones, you (indirectly?) spammed.

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Laika (Jacqueline) and KentBottles, Ves Dimov, M.D.. Ves Dimov, M.D. said: When Twitter Gets Creepy: People Who Force you to Autofollow http://bit.ly/9TYCeY There's nobody like medical librarian to explain it to you […]

ive just started using a twitterbot to automate my tweets, running a cron job do to my bidding. its only been going for three days and i am starting to feel like its repetitive and unethical. it just doesnt feel right.. the good thing (the only thing i think ill use it for from now on) is i can program tweets in other languages and run maybe one or two a day in german or spanish. as far as buying traffic.. i just dont think its right. if your saying something people want to hear, youll get followers

It’s been quite a while since this was posted, so hopefully it has been resolved. I have never noticed anything like that happening with my Twitter accounts, but I usually just ignore the DMs, so I guess I wouldn’t have noticed.

I noticed it today (albeit without Volk et al). My Twitter account is only a couple of days old. It may be a coincidence, but I noticed this when @TheMarketaire (Brett Prince) followed me. As I said, it might be coincidental but he is another marketer.